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Megatokyo, the webcomic everyone loves to hate, besides the hardcore fans that is, is hitting it big time as Kodansha recently announced they will be publishing the title on Japan. First through a 30 page introduction on Faust magazine in September and the first whole volume a few months after.

Love it or hate it, Fred-chan’s little-manga-that-could made the impossible jump. Which goes to show that if you believe yourself yourself to be something, eventually you are. Fred Gallagher, mangaka.

[ANN]

Tim Buckley, author of Ctrl+Alt+Del, is working on a list of features his ideal MMOG would have, being a man who’s played more MMOs than most of us would care to admit his opinions are quite interesting. Most I’ve seen implemented in a game already but never all. Two of my favorite bits:

Character Creation: Character creation is the first thing a gamer sees when he fires up an MMO, and the process defines their character for the entirety of the game. And not just what racial benefits and class they choose, but their appearance in-game. And I, for one, am sick and tired of developers acting like character customization is an afterthought. Something that takes a back seat. Three or four hairstyles and a couple of face options to choose from may be fine for a single player RPG, but when you’re going to be sharing a world with thousands of other people, you need more than that to differentiate yourself.

And,

Around level 20-ish, certain player classes would begin to learn teleports, similar to Wizards and Druids in the original Everquest. Available to port nearby members of their party to specific locations around the world, with more locations becoming available as they leveled up. In EQ, a lot of Wizards and Druids would run “taxi” services in their free time, and some would teleport travelers for free. Either way, it encouraged social interaction between players, something that automated travel in current games does not.

This last bit reminds me of Ragnarok Online where Acolytes and Priests were the primary source of transport, it made for great fun. What would your ideal MMO contain? Let us know in the comments!

[Ctrl+Alt+Del]

Megatokyo - when I first came upon this, it was in Borders. It was looking through the manga section, and the first Megatokyo manga (the Iron Cat edition) caught my eye. I was interested by it, so I bought it. At the back of the book, I realized that it was a webcomic. And it was on Megatokyo that I learned about “forums” - and let me tell you this, forums are like marijuana. They dumb you down, they’ll consume your life, and it’s a gateway drug to other stuff that’ll consume your life on the interweb. Not to mention, it also introduced me to l33t sp34k! Still, I owe it to Megatokyo for putting me on this path - were it not for them, I wouldn’t be typing up this post right now, or enjoying the glory of other webcomics.

Still, I’ve grown out of Megatokyo. It’s lost what it used to have since Rodney left.

Still onto the story.

Megatokyo is pretty much about two guys, Largo and Piro, who get lost in Japan and have to try to find their way home. At first, the webcomic was meant as an intentional, one shot comic strip. However, after Rodney Caston left, Fred Gallagher moved this webcomic into one that actually had a storyline. It’s quite odd, actually - Piro’s perspective in Japan is actually based off of Shouja mangas and animes (love, drama, cute girls, etc), whereas Largo’s is based off of Shounen entertainment (guns, Rent-a-zillas, ninjas, etc). It’s all a parody of otaku culture and every single otaku’s fantasy, pretty much - a hardcore otaku’s, anyways. It’s an exaggeration, no doubt about that. However, the webcomics become very successful, and considering that Fred has made a living out of it, you can always check it out, eh? Why not, it’s free! And see how he’s been able to make a living off of it!

And for those you too lazy to go through nearly a 1000 strips, you can always go out and buy the volumes. or check out the Reader’s Guide to Megatokyo. It’s even got a drinking game, too! So